gender reassignment

Gender nonconformity is the second most popular search term that leads people to Science of Eating Disorders. (After “science of eds” and beating “science of eating disorders”.) Not far behind are variants of “FtM/MtF/transsexual/transgender” combined with “eating disorder/anorexia/bulimia”. That’s telling. It means there is little information on this topic. And it is not just that there’s too little information available to the public – there are only a handful of published studies in the peer-reviewed literature.

Overall, they found disordered eating patterns reported by trans women and trans men were in the middle of those diagnosed with eating disorders and non-ED, cis controls. More specifically, trans women individuals had more severe disordered eating pathology than both female and male control groups, …

Too many people still mistakenly believe that eating disorders are for the Mary-Kates, Nicole Richies and Lara-Flynn Boyles, or vain adolescent and teenage girls aspiring to be just like them. Actually, as I’ve blogged earlier, even male veterans in late middle age are not immune to struggling with anorexia and bulimia nervosa. All in all, males make up ~ 5-10% of all eating disorder sufferers.

But what about those that dread having to check off “male” or “female” on a data form? What about individuals who feel their gender identity is not the same as their assigned birth sex. Perhaps they were born in a female body, with two XX chromosomes, but they feel and prefer to think of themselves as males, or the reverse? There’s some research (albeit limited, due to the rarity of both gender dysphoria and eating disorders) that suggests these individuals face an increased risk of developing eating disorders.

The most relevant and recent study on the intersection of gender identity and eating disorders that I found was published by Vocks et al. in …

Definitioner

a term for individuals whose gender expression is different from societal expectations related to gender (18)

gender nonconformity (gender nonconforming)

a term for individuals whose gender expression is different from societal expectations related to gender (18)

cis

prefix or adjective that means not trans, derived from the Latin word for being on the same side (as opposed to across from); implies that one (for the most part) lives comfortably as their gender assigned at birth (17)

gender dysphoria

clinical term referring to the various symptoms of malaise regarding one's assigned gender/sex (17)

transgender

commonly used as an umbrella term for people whose gender identity differs from the sex or gender they were assigned at birth, and for those whose gender expression differs from what is culturally expected of them (17)

trans

an umbrella term for people whose gender identity, expression or behavior is different from those typically associated with their assigned sex at birth (18)

trans

an umbrella term for people whose gender identity, expression or behavior is different from those typically associated with their assigned sex at birth (18)

body checking refers to an obsessive thought and behavior about appearance (e.g., frequent weighing, looking in the mirror, and pinching) (15)

lifetime prevalence

the number of people who will have a disorder at some time in their lives (14)

body image

one’s sense of the self and one’s body (14)

DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders)

published by the American Psychiatric Association, offers a common language and standard criteria for the classification of mental disorders (11)

DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders)

published by the American Psychiatric Association, offers a common language and standard criteria for the classification of mental disorders (11)

prevalence

the proportion of a population having a particular condition or characteristic (e.g., the percentage of people in a city with a particular disease, or who smoke) (2)

self-esteem

a generalized evaluative attitude toward the self that influences both moods and behavior and that exerts a powerful effect on a range of personal and social behaviors (4)

self-esteem

a generalized evaluative attitude toward the self that influences both moods and behavior and that exerts a powerful effect on a range of personal and social behaviors (4)

traits

characteristic behaviors and feelings that are consistent and long lasting (5)

incidence

the number of new cases of a given disease during a given period in a specified population; it also is used for the rate at which new events occur in a defined population; it is differentiated from prevalence, which refers to all cases, new or old, in the population at a given time (3)

hypothesis

a tentative and testable explanation of the relationship between two (or more) events or variables; often stated as a prediction that a certain outcome will result from specific conditions (4)

cognitive (cognition)

processes of knowing, including attending, remembering, and reasoning; also the content of the processes, such as concepts and memories (4)